I am an almost forty year old mum of two wild boys, high school teaching, husband loving person who has spent the better part of her life feeling like I am too much for this world.

I found romantasy eighteen months ago during one of the hardest periods of my life. And it saved me in the quiet, specific way that only stories can — by giving me somewhere to exist that wasn't the thing I was surviving.

But I could never quite find myself in them. The heroines were always young and chosen and unencumbered by, well, life. The messiness of it, the bills, the laundry, the particular exhaustion of being the person who knows where everything is and gets blamed when it isn't there.

I am deep in the middle of my life. Stretch marks and all.

So I am writing the story I needed to read.

What the Star Kept is about a woman who is forty, soft in all the places life has touched her, and absolutely nobody's chosen one. But something in another world recognises her anyway.

I am writing this book because women like me deserve an epic love story too.

I am also writing it at 10pm after the kids are in bed with a glass of rosé and absolutely no idea what I am doing.

And honestly? That feels exactly right.

New chapters published each week (life permitting!). Come along for the journey.

— CJ Wilder